


Shared Experiences in Bed

by LizRambler



Series: Sleepovers [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-25 21:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21363109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizRambler/pseuds/LizRambler
Summary: A second sleepover happens directly after New Earth
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Series: Sleepovers [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1531835
Comments: 10
Kudos: 106





	Shared Experiences in Bed

The trip didn’t end the way he wanted. The Doctor moved to the console and quickly ran through the motions to put the Tardis into the vortex. Halfheartedly, he rushed around a bit. New Earth had meant to be a friendly day out sight-seeing. Instead, he had had his personality crushed into a cube by a vain flap of skin and not just his mind, Rose’s mind. He clenched his jaw tightly, crushing his temper back down into place. It wouldn’t do to let Rose see he was still upset. Not after how compassionate Rose had been toward both Chip and Cassandra.

He turned to see her then, hugging herself, nibbling on a fingernail like she did when she was pensive. No, no, no, they were just getting back to properly traveling. Rose could not be pensive. She could be tired, or lazy or happy, or excitable, or angry, no maybe not angry or any other thing but not pensive. What she needed were banter and a distraction. Luckily the person who had ruined their day had also provided him with a perfect distraction. “Alright Rose? Not feeling the urge to snog me senseless are you?” he asked, keeping his head firmly down and pointed in the direction of the console.

Rose let out an undignified snort. “You wish.”

Oh, he very much did! Rassilon help him, he had believed it was Rose and his hearts had soared. Well, his brain had practically rebooted. He gave her a sidelong glance and caught her pink cheeks. He ignored that, had to ignore it, to get her going, “You sure? Not even a tiny urge? C’mon Rose, tell the truth.”

“If I say yes, you’ll think I’m Cassandra,” Rose quipped, “And toss me into space.”

“I’d have to avenge my friend, you understand,” he teased.

“Of course,” Rose replied, “And if you start talking about sambas while not near a samba band, you get the boot.”

“Only fair,” he replied, relaxing as Rose relaxed. “Although I do have an incredible story about how the West Africans influenced the Brazilian Urban- No? Another time?” He stopped talking when she raised her hands to chase him. He held his hands up in surrender. 

He turned back to the console to check the readings. He had a headache from the prolonged forced mental contact and didn’t want to get stuck doing maintenance tonight. The readings blurred. He pinched the bridge of his nose. A wave of exhaustion rushed through him making his knees buckle and if he was wavering… He spun and caught Rose as she wilted.

Rose was dead weight as he hefted her into a bridal carry. “Up you get, Rose Tyler,” he murmured as he took her through the corridors to her room. He kicked the door open and angled his body to get them both through the narrow opening. He dropped her down onto her unmade bed and sort of pushed her to what he called-only in his mind-his side of the bed. Not that he was ever on his side, just the once a week or so ago. Shaking it off, he went down to the end of the bed to remove her shoes.

“Whatcha doing?” Rose asked, voice a bit slurred. “M-my in bed?”

He dropped her shoes to the floor as Rose scooted back, sitting up. “Careful. Take it slow. You fainted.” An offended snort escaped her. The Doctor smirked in response. “You did! I almost did. That’s how I knew to catch you before you knocked your head on the grating or the console. Don’t think the Old Girl would like you bleeding all over her nice control panels.”

Rose was shaking it off now and eyeing him. “I never want to upset the Tardis,” she murmured. “Why did I faint?”

He hopped onto the bed beside her, noting that it was still as springy and soft as the last time he had been in it. He resisted the urge to yawn. Blimey, he was tired. He leaned back on his elbows. “Reaction to the psychograft. Your entire ‘you’ was compressed for hours on end. It’s not ideal.”

She let out the yawn he had been resisting. Quickly she covered her mouth as she slid off the bed. “Makes sense.” She wrinkled her adorable little nose. “Didn’t like it much.”

“No, me either,” he agreed too quickly, earning him a speculative look. Busted. He quickly looked away to scratch at a sudden itch along his throat. He was going to need a shave. He gave her a sidelong glance and both her eyebrows were up. He mirrored her.

“I’m having a shower,” she announced. “Covered in disinfectant and…” she waved a hand dismissing the hours of stress sweat, adrenaline and regular odors that build up when you run for your life all day. “Bit...manky. You staying?”

“Hm?” He glanced down realizing he must look fairly settled in on his side of the bed for her to comment on it. “If you want,” he affected a breezy tone before the threatening yawn finally caught up with him, making his jaw crack. “Don’t have to. I can take a kip on the jumpseats or in the library… bit damp with the pool but…”

“Don’t you have your own bedroom?” Rose asked, sounding exasperated but her eyes were twinkly. 

“A whole room just for sleeping? Ridiculous concept. Timelords don’t sleep *that* much, Rose.”

“Right, superior blah blah blah,” Rose grumbled. “Go take a shower if you’re staying. Still covered in all those cures and you smell like antiseptic.”

The Doctor slid off the bed, slightly insulted. He sniffed his wrist and winced. Maybe he did smell a bit antisceptic. It was more like a combination of all the medicinal smells ever with a hint of rosemary. He slunk off to shower wondering if he should just go have a kip on the unicorn float in the pool but his head was still pounding and Rose’s bed was soft soft soft. Plus Rose had invited him, sort of and he didn’t want to be rude.

In pajamas, he asked the Tardis to change the sheets for him just in case the scent on their clothes had gotten into the fabric. He wandered back into the room to eat both chocolates the Tardis had laid out on the pillows. A second one appeared on Rose’s pillow with an admonishing tingle in the back of his mind. Huffing, he settled onto his side to wait. The pain in his head was radiating and thumping in time to his pulses. Telepathic hangover could last for hours without the right sort of touch to mitigate it. Unfortunately, there weren’t any Timelords left to let him hang around in their minds for a while to soothe it away.

Rose appeared in sleep shorts and vest, her hair wrapped tightly in a towel. She crawled into the bed, dropping the towel to the floor. She almost smushed her face into the chocolate. He rescued it just in time to pop it into his own mouth. A grumble escaped the pillow and the admonishing tingle was repeated with a little zap to his mind. A box of chocolates appeared on Rose’s side of the bed. “Why do I feel like I did hypervodka shots with Jack until the three in the morning?”

“Pyschograft,” he reminded her.

She moaned. “I’m dying.”

“You’re not,” he chirruped, “it only lasts a few hours.”

“My brains are going to leak out my ears,” Rose said.

He wrapped a loose curl of damp hair around his finger and lifted the silky stuff to observe her ear. “Just normal human ears, no brain matter just yet.”

“Can aspirin fix it?” she asked.

“No,” he replied unsure he should offer the obvious solution. “There’s nothing wrong with your physical form. It’s more of a ‘psychic’ pain. No broken bones to repair. No wounds to clot…”

Rose opened her eyes to stare at him. It hurt him to see his own pain reflected there. “Can’t you do something? The Tardis…”

He ran a hand over his face before fluffing up his hair. The answer was obvious and Rose wasn’t stupid. Physical wounds needed physical solutions. Telepathic injuries required- “I know how you feel about people going into your mind,” he began, “especially after what happened today.”

“You can stop the pain, can’t you? But you have to go into my mind to do it, don’t you?” Rose parsed.

“Not if you don’t want me to, I won’t,” he answered.

Rose was silent. “Would it...hurt?”

“No, doesn't have to. Rose, I know it makes you uncomfortable. The pain will abate on its own. Sleep a few hours. There’s no need to-”

She reached out and grabbed one of his hands as he fidgeted. She laced their fingers together. “I was mad because you didn’t ask first. You just let your weird alien ship get in my head and change things.” The Tardis grumbled. Rose reacted to it which surprised him. “No, you know what I mean, he messed up, not you. Anyhow, you’re not going to read all my thoughts, are you? Or make me do anything stupid like cluck like a chicken...”

“It’s not hypnosis,” he protested and winced as his own volume rattled his mind. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“I know. Trust you. Go ahead. No sneaking peeks to find out where I hid the biscuit tin, mind.” 

“Rose, you have to give me permission,” he warned.

Rose rolled over and propped herself up on one elbow, facing him. “I give you permission.” He shivered at the blatant trust in her hazel eyes. The little gold flecks in them seemed to swirl. She smiled even though it had to be hurting her. “What do we do?”

He wiggled his fingers. “C’mere, closer to me. Hm, you might fall asleep. I could just…” He scooted down and rearranged her bodily so he could spoon her. Rose giggled then whimpered as the laugh hurt her poor damaged psyche. “This alright?”

Rose wriggled. She was just getting comfortable but it pushed a lot of her up against a lot of him and if his psyche wasn’t in screaming pain, he’d be having a hard time right about now. “Yeah, good.”

He reached his right hand up and pressed the pads of his fingers against her temple. Her skin radiated warmth. Humans ran so hot. She seemed to enjoy the temperature differences too as she let out a sigh as his fingers made contact. “Let me in. Just relax.”

Rose did her best, taking deep breaths and leaning her weight more heavily into his long, thin frame. She was still tense enough for him to take a minute to sink down into her mind. He hadn’t done anything close to this since before the war and he was rusty. Her natural walls were weak. He slipped in between the gaps like cracks in a poorly made wall. Once inside he was overwhelmed by the warmth of her mind.

“Alright?” Rose’s voice came out raspy. She had to feel his presence. 

“Yeah, yep, just been a long time,” he responded inside her head instead of using his voice. His actual voice would be pitchy and weird or husky and a dead giveaway right about now. 

Rose’s mental presence reacted by tinging pink with curiosity, interest, pleasure, and pain. He reached for the pain. It was like catching fireflies or wasps and snuffing them. Each red light that went out sent a shiver of relief through Rose’s spine, making her wriggle against him and nearly distracting him from his task each and every time. “Stop wriggling.”

“It tickles!” Rose’s energy shifted away from pain and farther into amusement, pleasure, curiosity, and interest. He shied away from the thoughts blazing past him. They weren’t his business if she didn’t direct them to him, as tempting as they were all bright and golden and low hanging. All he would have to do… He reined himself in and obliterated the damage the psychic compression had caused. Any stray bits of Cassandra were cleared away. Rose let out a relieved moan. 

The Doctor did a few million maths to cover up his body's attempted reaction to that sound plus the mental contact. One day he’d tell Rose how incredibly inappropriately intimate this current experience was for him. But not today. Wasn’t about him. “How do you feel?”

“Good,” Rose moaned again. He raised his eyes heavenward in his mental form. The girl was trying to murder him. “You feel sort of like a cool spot in a hot room…”

“Shade? I’m shade? I’m a tree in your mind,” he teased, letting her mind soothe his own psychic pain. Giggling escaped her physical body and echoed across her mental landscape in sparkling colors. He imagined a tree with silver leaves and Rose sitting underneath it with a book. Rose got the picture and slid into the construct.

She smiled, dropping the book. “I like trees.” She said, her lips not moving as she gained control of the landscape. Thoughts didn’t need lips in here. She stood up and regarded the tree. “It’s pretty.”

“How’s your head?” she asked approaching his presence. He gave her the illusion of himself in pinstripes and she raced forward to grab his hands. He beamed down at her and he winced. She ran a hand through his hair not knowing how much her mental contact did to soothe the pain. He leaned into her hand. “Still hurts?”

“I’m fine. Think you can sleep now? There’s no one in here but you.”

“And you,” she reminded him. 

Not for long, he thought. He really, really, really liked it in Rose’s mind. She was full of bright colors and warm feelings. She felt a lot like the Tardis, like home, only better. The library started to form around them as Rose got the hang of projecting a mental image to him. She pushed him down onto one of the thick squashy chairs. A feeling of relief bloomed behind his eyes. He really should withdraw.

“Stay.” Rose touched his head. “Tell me how to help you like you helped me.”

The Doctor glanced up at her. “Rose,” he began.

“Doctor,” she echoed.

“I’m fine.”

“Liar. Can feel you’re not.” Rose tapped her head. 

“You shouldn’t be able to feel anything from me,” he argued as outside of the mental image their minds continued to mingle. Where the edges touched, he would get tiny pings of relief. 

Rose’s brows went up. 

“You wouldn’t want to do it.” he protested.

“Doctor,” she growled. “I know what that headache feels like. What’s the problem? Gotta set up shop in my head? For a week? A day? A night?”

“Four hours,” he capitulated. “You’d have to let me stay for a bit. It’s fine. You don’t have to do it. I am fine.”

Rose frowned. 

He gathered himself trying to ground himself in his fingers to pull his mind back fully into his own body. As he did, the landscape changed becoming the bed in her room complete with wrinkled pink duvet, pillows, and a snack tray setup. “What?”

“It’s like a mind um, mental sleepover.” she said, grinning, “and this time I get to braid your hair.”

The Doctor felt his hair lengthening into rich dark tresses. Rose laughed. She had gotten the handle on this way too quickly. “No, oh, no, no, no.”

“Ground Rules: Stay out of my memories. Don’t eat all the ice cream I imagined-” She ticked them off on her fingers.

“I could just imagine more-” he argued.

“And you let me paint your nails this time.”

She grinned as he shuddered in mock horror. He actually thought he’d look good in blue varnish and a few blue bows… 

“Alright, but I get to pick the movie.”

“What about in the real world?” Rose asked. 

“I fell asleep ten minutes ago,” the Doctor remarked. “You fell asleep before me.”

Rose smiled softly. “We’re dreaming all this?”

“Mm, I guess you could say, I’m the man *in* your dreams, Rose Tyler.” The Doctor beamed.

Rose hit him with a pillow.


End file.
